I earned my first PhD in 2012, by the University Autónoma of Madrid. My PhD thesis "Higgs bundles and Hermitian symmetric spaces'' was supervised by Óscar García-Prada at the ICMAT.

Thirty-five years ago, when I arrived at Indiana University, a senior faculty member took me aside and gave me some advice. "Ewing," he said, "here are five things you ought to do in the next few years if you want to be a mathematician." Publish sensibly, discover constantly, travel extensively, talk widely, teach passionately. Do those things, he said, and mathematics becomes a part of your life - not just a job, but a profession. That was good advice.